Did you follow our fabulous #fridayquiz on Twitter? Well, whether you played every week and are
missing your fact fix, or missed out on the fun altogether, we’ve got a treat in store. Here are all the
questions, and of course answers, in one place. Test your King’s Venues knowledge and see how
many you know the answer to. Good luck!
Q. What year do the oldest parts of King's Strand campus (inc The Great Hall) date back to?
A. 1831.
Q. Which other iconic London landmarks did the architect of The College Chapel at the Strand
design?
A. The chapel was designed in high Gothic style in 1860 by George Gilbert Scott who was also
responsible for St Pancras Station and the Albert Memorial.
Q. How long did it take King's Venues to acquire Somerset House East Wing?
A. 180 years!
Q. Where do the underground tunnels leading from the Franklin-Wilkins Building go?
A. The tunnels lead to the station. They were built in WW1 so that wounded soldiers could be
brought into the building (which had been converted into a hospital) without the public seeing their
injuries.
Q. How many kilometres of shelving were removed from The Public Records Office when it moved to
Kew?
A. 48 km. The shelving was slate and could have covered the course of a marathon.
Q. How many people can fit in all the rooms in all of King's Venues at any one time?
A. At least 6,383. This figure covers our key rooms, but it's nearly double this if you include all of our
classrooms and lower-profile spaces.
Q. How many tube stations are within a ten-minute walk of a King's Venues' building?
A. 11 - and they are (if you're interested!) Temple, Embankment, Covent Garden, Charing Cross,
London Bridge, Borough, Waterloo, Southwark, Holborn, Westminster, Blackfriars and Lambeth
North.
Q. What degree did Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan read at King's?
A. Engineering.
Q. In the QS World University Rankings where does King's College London place?
A. Joint 19th.
Q. The Maughan Library's clock tower was not built primarily as a timepiece - so why was it
constructed?
A. The clock tower was added in 1865, not for decorative purposes but to house a water tank, as a
fire precaution.
Q. Which WW1 legend is rumoured to have begun his journey of espionage from a fridge in Cornwall
House?
A. The Man Who Never Was (the exhumed corpse that was used to mislead the Germans over the
invasion of Sicily).
Q. What did romantic poetic John Keats study at King's before embarking on his writing career?
A. He trained as a surgeon-apothecary. Soon after he renounced medicine in favour of poetry.
Q. King's was founded by and named after which king?
A. King George IV.
Q. How much was King’s annual income in 2013?
A. £587 million.
Q. What game is said to have been invented on the playing fields of the Strand campus?
A. Lawn tennis.
Q. The Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchilsea fought a duel over King's. Who won?
A. Neither man was hurt.
Q. Which of our buildings used to have a 1.5 acre garden and revolving summer houses on the roof?
A. The Franklin-Wilkins building.
Q. Can you name any musicians who've played at King's? Clue - there are LOTS of them!
A. Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, the Foo Fighters, Mackelmore, Status Quo, The Police, Vampire
Weekend, The Foals, The Vaccines, Tha Haim, The Smiths... we could go on. Unfortunately the night
club Tutu's which was housed at the Strand is no more.
Q. Which two Bond films have shot scenes on location @kingsvenues?
A. Golden Eye and Tomorrow Never Dies.
Q. Why did Shakespeare spend 18 days at Somerset House in 1604?
A. The King's Men, Shakespeare's theatre company, was on duty there while a peace treaty was
signed between Spain and England. They had been drafted in to entertain the Spanish envoy and
King James.
Q. Which political TV programme was originally filmed in the Maughan Library?
A. Question Time.
Q. How many years ago (this month – January 2015) did King's become a truly co-educational
college?
A. The answer is 100 years. In January 1915 female students from King's College for Women (in
Kensington) moved to join the male students at the Strand Campus.
Q. How many guests can King’s Venues’ summer accommodation cater for at any one time?
A. 2,948, over five campuses across London.
Q. How many King’s alumni and staff were recognised in the 2015 Queen’s Honours list?
A. Five - Dickson Poon, CBE, Prof Eileen Sills, Prof Margaret Brown, Prof Jenny Gallagher and Prof
Peter Riven Braude.
Make sure you follow @kingsvenues on Twitter.